Twitter, as of now, no longer has the Ticketed Spaces feature. It is or was, a live Spaces conversation wherein Twitter users will have to pay to listen. The social media giant paused the feature so they can focus on continuing to improve and bring new features to the core Spaces experience, as mentioned in Engadget.
Ticketed Spaces
The company introduced Ticketed Spaces in August 2021, just three months after it released the Spaces feature. This allows creators to host discussions, audio chats, or TED-style talks. Users will have to pay a fee to enter and interact within the space.
Although, Twitter's profits for the Ticketed Spaces feature can be relatively low. The social media platform will only get a cut of 3% to 20% from the host's revenue, depending on whether it exceeds or is below $50,000.
Hosts can set the price for tickets from $1 to $999. They are also in control of how many audiences can enter the space. Twitter uses third-party payment processors like Apple and Google payouts.
The paid feature hasn't been as used as it was during the early days of the pandemic. It was a useful way for people to virtually interact as they cannot do it physically. Now that restrictions are almost completely lifted, people are more drawn to personal discussions than virtual ones.
Other Spaces Projects
The company is looking into support with live chats inside Communities. Communities are comparable to Facebook's feature with the same name, where users with the same interests can interact with each other.
Another would be the project of themed stations and daily digests. Users could browse through stations about music, sports, and other topics. They can also play personalized daily digests with several contents.
A New Twitter
The discontinuation of the feature, however, has no connection to Elon Musk's recent acquisition of the app. But the tech billionaire has promised changes for the company.
He announced his plans to form a "content moderation council" at the company. Before the council convenes, Musk will not make any "major content decisions" or lift the bans from previous accounts, according to CNBC.
This is on top of the tech mogul firing Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal, CFO Ned Segal, and Head of Legal Policy, Trust, and Safety Vijaya Gadde.
Among his other plans is making the platform open to free speech. He aims to make it an open "digital town square" of ideas, without the intervention of strict policies. He expressed that he will allow anyone to say whatever they want, granted that it is legal, as mentioned in Vox.
The lack of moderation may lead to a chaotic social networking site. Platforms like Parler, Truth Social, and Gettr have proven that a lack of policies may lead to a hate-filled and toxic space.
If the only restriction Elon Musk will impose on tweets is whether it's illegal, then it opens a lot of possibilities for technically legal hate speech. These can lead to racial slurs, bullying, spam, or graphic violent content.
Musk's response to this future problem is limiting the reach of unpleasant content, which can be done by using algorithms to promote or downrank content. So anyone can say what they want, but the number of users it can reach will depend on what its premise is.
